Politics And Science At The LHC

In the days before Madison Avenue, public relations and spin doctors, Science was free to speak for itself. Like any other activity it was criticized and judged on its activites and results by media and the people. If the public had questions, the scientists answered them. Political games were for government and business. Now big science instituitions and labs with their own bewildering bureaucracies, have developed an interface to present an ideal world of science through their press offices and lobbyists. They sell science like GM sells cars. Somehow the media seems not to have noticed the difference, taking spin doctors' science press kits and sound bite analysis at face value.

Camera shy bumbling scientists with thick accents who were honest about what they were doing, if you could follow the science and what they said, have now been pushed behind closed doors while the media gurus have taken over. At CERN they go a step further and stage media science events, like the big ballyhoo September 10th to show off the Large Hadron Collider during a preliminary start-up test. A modest start-up showcase for an extremely powerful atom-smasher that smashes nothing that day is played out as a big success and a victory for LHC safety. No more doomsday. Doomsayers all wrong, CERN always right. Then three big things go wrong which are skillfully downplayed. While the little ball of protons zips around, the CMS computer system is being hacked by the Greek Team and that for 2 days at the home of the World Wide Web? A 30 tonne surface transformer blows 36 hours later during a thunderstorm. Then a massive failure occurs in the cryogenic cooling system which cripples an eighth of the 17 mile collider ring. Very little information released, but a lot of reassurances on "teething troubles" at the giant baby collider.

It can get worse. The latest surprise from CERN is a new paper published which finally comes to grips with part of the problem with the helium used in their massive near absolute zero cooling system. The CERN paper dismisses every safety concern with helium without considering all of them in "There is no explosion risk associated with superfluid Helium in the LHC cooling system", September 23, 2008, by Malcolm Fairbairn and Bob McElrath of the CERN theory group.

Its focus is helium-4 bosenovas at the LHC and cold fusion during these events.

The short answer is, "We conclude that that there is no physics whatsoever which suggests that Helium could undergo any kind of unforseen catastrophic explosion."

Sounds like these guys were in a hurry, but right behind the Eight Ball. "that that" is fast fast, potential there for a new type of doublespeak. Of course there was an explosive release of one to two tonnes of superfluid helium last time, but that was different. Not a real explosion, more like your radiator exploding, not your gas tank. But the paranormal mindbender winner is, as KFC at the physics arXiv blog said of CERN's conclusions, "That's comforting and impressive. Ruling out forseen catastrophies is certainly useful but the ability to rule out unforeseen ones is truly amazing."

It's a welcome response from CERN even if it is only partial. I first raised the issue myself in ScienticBlogging, July 2nd, 2008, in "Superfluids, BECs And Bosenovas: The Ultimate Experiment" reprinted here on The Science of Conundrums. When CERN didn't bother answering, I contacted their LSAG people via email twice, August 25th and 29th, but included other helium risks like the production of helium-3 via LHC energies ionizing helium-4, where helium-3 bosenovas obviously should also be considered. I received no reply and CERN's paper doesn't address helium-3 bosenovas either. I also wrote about nuclear events in helium, certainly a potential danger in helium-3 and even possible plasma and fusion reactions of helium-3 at the LHC. Again no answer from CERN. Only this sweeping rebuttal: "There is no physics whatsoever which suggests that Helium could undergo any kind of unforseen catastrophic explosion" Is this science or speculation and politics? Don't worry from CERN, but this time not from the CERN PR department, but their CERN theory group.

If this sounds a spectacular failure in addressing safety issues honestly, well what other explanation is there? All they had to say was Helium-4 Bosenovas are Bunk, and Cold Fusion of Helium-4 Stinks. Of course we hope other physicists will examine CERN's 6 page paper and let everyone know if CERN's arguments are sound. Even if they are on Helium-4, one mosquito does not a summer make. Though there have been plenty of light speed protons in another CERN public relations context, masquerading as mosquitos.

If the politics of safety can override safety concerns, like chicks sprawled on red sports cars, are there other similar sales jobs on safety approximating the scientific? Where is the CERN Model hiding out? Look no further than the pharmacuetical industry. When people die, safe products are recalled. Tons of safety reports and tankers on a magazine sunset, and then a giant oil tanker spills and kills birds and animals and fish by the thousands. With 6 months of downtime at the LHC thanks to accidents can happen, they've got plenty of time for gearing up for a new sales campaign, CERN TV commmercials. We're still waiting breathlessly for "Spin the Collider and Win" or "My Best Friend is a Collider / When he gets warm I get hot / Gimme gimme gimme more / My collider / Bang, bang, bang / Big Bang. Be there! Beat Doomsday! Make it happen. Geneva is to die for. Hunker in our bunker or dance the night away. Win a trip for two at participating Dunkin Donuts, your Collider Central. Free Collider Keychain in every limited time only Giant Collider Donut. Careful when you munch. Be safe, dunk first."

Nowadays politics is part of big science. Recently a Climate scientist at MIT, Richard S Lindzen wrote a paper, "Climate Science: Is it currently designed to answer questions?" Although the author states that the focus of his paper is on climate science, "some of the problems pertain to science more generally."

Lindzen notes "the change in the scientific paradigm from a dialectic opposition between theory and observation to an emphasis on simulation and observational programs." The LHC Machine is certainly part of this change from earlier Einsteinian physics to let's see what happens when we simulate the Big Bang.

". . . an emphasis on large programs that never end." Fifty years of CERN and now on a budget of $1 billion a year with a $10 billion broken collider that might never work right.

". . . the hierarchical nature of formal scientific organizations whereby a small executive council can speak on behalf of thousands of scientists as well as govern the distribution of 'carrots and sticks' where by reputations are made and broken." CERN in a nutshell.

". . . the politically desired position becomes a goal rather than a consequence of scientific research." New Physics sought.

". . . scientists adjust both data and even theory to accommodate politically correct positions, and how opposition to these positions is disposed of." Safety or the appearance of safety? Critics are doomsayers who just don't understand.

Well this still works for CERN because it is an enormous organization that has a small powerful directorate and a Director General with Presidential Powers, 'carrots and sticks'. So big and influential in physics that those within and those outside are wary of demurring on anything. Even 20 EU governments that support CERN financially applaud rather than criticize, but then they're not scientists, or cost accountants, and just as misinformed as anyone else. If there are any diplomatic groans, it's probably because the big collider party this October 21st has been called off. In the interests of vitual safety, no doubt here a Virual Inauguration would be safer for Heads of State. Cheaper too, a few souvinir hardhats FedEx'd. Click for Bollinger and caviar now.

No doubt CERN will spring for the real thing. These guys pay their bills. It's prestige that still counts. With participation in other nuclear labs in Europe and friendly relations with many others worldwide, CERN amounts to something like the Church of the Middle Ages. Not based in Geneva for nothing. In 1955 the Swiss Government gave CERN carte blanche to operate in Switzerland as part of the deal to locate its operations in Switzerland. The list of concessions and priviledges CERN enjoys gives it the power of a city state (currently 2,600 staff, plus some 7,931 scientists and engineers, in Wikipedia) or in modern terms, that accorded to a foreign government's embassy and its diplomats. When CERN expanded into France in 1973, the French government was more circumspect but awarded CERN similar if more limited powers. Neither country though has jurisdiction over CERN, its property, its personnel or its activities. Though the French have reserved some rights including the right to intervene if there is a threat to France. If CERN blows up Geneva, Switzerland will have to sue Fermilab. An obvious mistake to put an organization above the law, like we didn't know the gun was loaded. Anyone in Switzerland or CERN care to bet that the obvious mistakes are the most statistically significant?

Surely if there were doubts within CERN as to problems or even the advisability of the Large Hadron Collider in the first place, we would hear about it? Not much has slipped through the cracks in the CERN PR department except their tactics. One source is CERN archives. Some CERN people have found themselves embassassed in hindsight when their candid comments were recorded in CERN videos, transcripts and documents.

One insider has recently commented, not realizing there was some unwritten code of silence. A CERN physicist, Tommaso Dorigo who works at the LHC CMS experiment, wrote in his blog, A Quantum Diaries Survivor, "In fact CERN appears a bit up-tight about the latest events in sector 34 of the LHC tunnel. He goes on to say ". . . since my blog is targeted as a possible source of leaks. . . And if I play fair, maybe I am allowed to survive here, and maybe one day I will stop being threatened every other day, in the name of protecting internal information of the experiments I am a part of."

Dorigo concludes, "Of course, I still assert my complete disagreement at a way to conduct scientific experiments paid with your tax money which resembles the management of the Pentagon rather than an agorà of education, research and scientific communication."

--Alan Gillis


References

Fairbairn, Malcolm and McElrath, Bob. "There is no explosion risk associated with superfluid Helium in the LHC cooling system", September 23, 2008, arxiv,
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0809/0809.4004v1.pdf

KFC. "Forget black holes, could the LHC trigger a "Bose supernova"?, September 29, 2008, the physics arxiv blog, http://arxivblog.com/?p=645

Gillis, Alan. "Superfluids, BECs And Bosenovas: The Ultimate Experiment At The LHC", July 12, 2008, The Science of Conundrums, http://bigsciencenews.blogspot.com/2008/07/superfluids-becs-and-bosenovas-ultimate.html

Gillis, Alan. "The Almost Thermonuclear LHC", March 17, 2008, The Science of Conundrums, http://bigsciencenews.blogspot.com/2008/03/almost-thermonuclear-lhc.html

Lindzen, Richard S. "Climate Science: Is it currently designed to answer questions?", September 27, 2008, arxiv, http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0809/0809.3762.pdf

Dorigo, Tommaso. "An agorà of education and scientific communication", September 23, 2008, A Quantum Diaries Survivor, http://dorigo.wordpress.com/2008/09/23/an-agora-of-education-and-scientific-communication/

CERN / Switzerland. "Agreement between the Swiss Federal Council and the European Organization for Nuclear Research . . .", June 11, 1955, CERN Legal Services, http://documents.cern.ch/archive/electronic/other/legal/articles/LSL00000012.pdf

CERN / France. "Agreement between the Government of the French Republic and the European Organization for Nuclear Research . . .", August 30, 1973, CERN Legal Services, http://documents.cern.ch/archive/electronic/other/legal/articles/LSL00000010.pdf

LHC Sci-Fi And Critics Buried In The Blogosphere

The British ATLAS Team inspecting their Stargate Portal, the higher-dimensional ‘shipping container’ ready for activation, beating the American LOST Team by 2.2 years. The Russians were the first to crack the top secret potential of the LHC Time Machine, but forgot to commercialize it.

Now the American LOST Team has the Hollywood edge, with millions watching every week, and an Internet frenzy that eclipses anything on real science. Fifty million hits on one LOST fan site alone. The LHC Money Train smokes, while mighty NASA bites the Martian dust.

It gets goofier with the new Dan Brown movie, Angels and Demons, and Tom Hanks, scheduled for launch May 15, 2009. Stealing antimatter from CERN to make a bomb to blow up the Vatican. CERN did produce antiprotons with the old LEP and even a tiny bit of antihydrogen, enough to blow up a jumbo cup of movie popcorn, though they’re not planning to produce any with the LHC, unless by accident, in which case it might blow up and uh-oh fuse some helium.

So the interest in the LHC is big, sideways. Considering its real world unknown potential to blow itself up with a super bosenova, and maybe Geneva, or produce a runaway black hole that might devour the planet, or strangelets, or magnetic monopoles or wormholes, there’s, oddly, little enough real interest outside the physics community.

The problem is, that apart from a few critics with scientific credentials who have gone public, those with some international clout, either support the LHC, like Stephen Hawking, or are working directly or are collaborating with CERN, about 8,000 or half of all particle physicists. The others are teaching or working at other labs. Some have their doubts about the wisdom of going ahead with the LHC, but they’re either obliged to keep them private to protect their jobs and reputations, or they voice their concerns during coffee breaks at committee meetings. For those physicists outside the CERN loop, CERN invites them to contact Michelangelo Mangano, a CERN physicist and quantum spin doctor, who handles serious objections at the LHC. He must be good. Complaints go in and like in a black hole, they never come out again.

With the mainstream media unwilling to investigate possible dangers at the LHC, that leaves the field open for anonymous and amateur scientists to criticize the LHC, about a dozen major websites and blogs geared to monitor the LHC, and comments posted on hundreds of news sites that run articles on the LHC, even on social bookmarking sites and anonymous blogs and blogs within blogs. Comments run from the abysmally dumb, to panic-stricken, to rumor-mongering, to honest complaining or just having fun with doomsday, though there is some erudite analysis, tantalizing but not easily verifiable. Here are a few worth reading.

From Physicsworld: vbarashkov June 24, 2008 2:58 PM
I doubt that is how a black hole can be formed, considering that as we know so far it takes an entire star to form one. Not only that, but for a black hole to form exactly how much must the two atoms be compressed. Certainly a lot more than they can be in a head on collision even at near twice the speed of light. If I had 20 ton iron sphere, and I compressed it to fit on a tip of a needle, the only thing it would do is explode with enough energy to destroy the entire planet. . .

Anyone seen a black 20 ton iron sphere? It was here a second ago? Never mind, Val found the vodka.

From Geekology: VtFarmboy - February 12, 2008 11:22 AM
I think Mr. Scott needs to get back to the enterprise. He's needed the Klingons are attacking and the warp drive dilithum crystals are decaying.

And Spock. Is that new compression algorithm ready? We need to beam up the LHC before it blows up. Professor Rössler wants it on the Moon right now.

From The Great Beyond, BlogsNature: Walt 06-18-08 01:00 AM
. . .The CERN-LHC website Mainpage itself states quote: "There are many theories as to what will result from these collisions..." This stunning admission is because they truly don't know what's going to happen. They are experimenting with forces they don't understand to obtain results they can't comprehend. If you think like most people do that 'They must know what they're doing.' you could not be more wrong. The second part of the quote reads "...but what's for sure is that a brave new world of physics will emerge from the new accelerator..." A molecularly changed or Black Hole consumed Lifeless World? The end of the quote reads "as knowledge in particle physics goes on to describe the workings of the Universe." These experiments to date have so far produced infinitely more questions than answers but there isn't a particle experimentalist physicist alive who wouldn't gladly trade his life to glimpse the "God particle", and sacrifice the rest of us with him. . .

Walt has it right. Here is the actual embarrassing CERN webpage, Our understanding of the Universe is about to change...

From NatureNews: David Wenbert 06 May 2008
. . . 4. Perhaps the unqualified legacy of monumental failure and waste exhibited by the high energy and plasma physics community is instructive here. After more than 50 years of building ever larger and more powerful colliders and plasma reactors, at a cost of untold Billions of dollars, NO useful scientific breakthroughs have ever been recorded from either such device, and both a Fundamental Understanding of Matter, and Controlled Fusion Energy remain totally elusive. The abject failure of particle physicists to have achieved their objectives (i.e. discovering the Higgs Boson) with prior collider experiments - although widely predicted to have done so - indicates the low reliability of their certainty in the outcome of these experiments. Consistently wrong, over decades, in their assertions that 'the last big machine' would illuminate the structure of matter - or ignite a controlled breakeven reaction, for that matter - leaves us with no alternative but to conclude that the same physicists may be no more accurate in predicting the behavior of 'the next big machine. The math doesnt fix this, since each such project had 'good math' to contend it would meet its scientific objectives, and yet, repeatedly, failure ensued. The rich, deep, and unbroken record of failure in these "Big Physics" projects is a Red Flag that the warnings from the fringe on potential distasters should be heeded. The physicists who propound the reliability of their assumptions have yet to be proven right once, whereas, the alarmists only need to be right 'once'. The Precautiionary Principle would seem wisely applied in these collider debates.

Read the thread and Wenbert’s full comment, in response to a previous comment by Richard Dawson who wrote to CERN and got some answers he quotes from the CERN letter.

One important point on micro black holes, received no comments, but is worth another look. The unnamed CERN source wrote, “But since, in case they (mBH) really exist, there will be millions produced, this means that indeed a few of them would be stopped within earth and start accretion. This however does not mean that they will crush the earth.” This is the point most commentators have been worried about. The odd thing is that at first CERN ignored the possibility of black hole formation, then embraced it publically as the LHC Black Hole Factory, while in their latest safety report, the LSAG is busy swatting mBH as though they were CERN’s famous TeV mosquitoes. That embarrassing Safety at the LHC webpage has been deleted, replaced with a summary of the new LSAG report where Einstein has been resurrected, and therefore “. . . it is impossible for microscopic black holes to be produced at the LHC.” Mosquitoes however, linger on Are LHC Collisions Safe?

The best analysis ever was made inadvertently, by The New York Times, when they called the LHC, The Large Hardon Collider, which fits in well with Big Bang Theory, on everybody’s mind since the hit TV show.

Seriously, there is one dissenting group of physicists at CERN, forced to do retro cabaret or else get lepton, none other than those sexy control room bottoms from the biggest collider ever, Les Horribles Cernettes.

The Future Of Science

The problem with Science is there are a lot of problems. Funny thing is nobody seems to think so. What you get in the media are a lot of geewiz science shows and stories. Of course Science is our modern magic and the revelations and accomplishments overwhelm us and our critical thinking, where fantasy becomes a reality, at least for a few spoiled scientists. Later we get the spinoffs. Space Tourism next according to Virgin (not the goddess but the record company) and the Japanese who are already planning Honeymoon Hotels (where else but on the Moon). Once the ball starts rolling it can go anywhere, from E=MC squared, to Hiroshima and Chernobyl, people being people and not very scientific.

If Science flops or goofs somewhere, the media provides an apology, like it's a regrettable mistake which won't happen again and better luck next time. Or lately the usual we're getting better at this. Safeguards are now in place. Science is after all, Experimental Science and naturally some experiments fail. Usually we pay a long term price for them, but the media are not concerned with the future. There are fires and ticking time bombs everywhere that are instigated by Science and yet no one holds scientists accountable. The nuclear industry for example. And what really is important, whether a success or failure, is not evaluated on TV and in print. We'll worry about that later, when the facts are in. By that time it's usually too late. Look at the drastic poisoning of the environment by a handful of agricultural chemical companies. What warnings there were, came from left field, not from the scientific community who are even less critical of themselves than we are. A few ordinary people protested like Rachel Carson in Silent Spring. Like farmers, but the media weren't listening. They still don't. A few groups have organized against the chemicalization but they're considered flaky or they're blackballed as Far Left or as troublesome extremists like Greenpeace. What compounds the comatose response to environmental threats is the comforting presence of government agencies like the EPA in America, who have their own scientists approving this and that, so we're safe in doing nothing. Leave the professionals to deal with the professionals. Sounds great in theory. In fact, certainly there's less degradation in the environment and our health, than without these agencies, but it goes on at an alarming pace. Statistics like a third of all Americans suffering from some respiratory illness grouped into asthma, up from 3% since 1900. Obviously there's room for ordinary people to get involved in the debate about our future.

The only other critics we have who come down hard on Science are writers of science fiction and later the movie makers who've been warning us since Victorian times like HG Wells. The gloom and doom about the future, the future of Science, is almost a daily feature of our lives. Yet we don't seem to be taking the warnings of the inevitable progress of Science seriously. But I'm sure we worry a lot while we're watching these blockbusters, squirming in our seats at the appalling things going on. But here it's more like adrenalin space junkies getting their fix. Always some wiseguy scientist quoted later, trying to bring us down, who says that this movie's based on poor science. Don't worry. That'll never happen. It can't happen if you know your Science.

Evidently there is a need for a public forum on the future, The Science of Conundrums. Nobody seems to know what to do about the present. If we look ahead and figure out what kind of future we want, we could shape the present so we get to the future. Not some wasteland.